


Don’t You Dare Look Back (Just Keep Your Eyes On Me)

by dancinbutterfly



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Banter, Blood and Gore, Conversations with the Gentry, Cult of Coram Agh Ter, Family Drama, Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Jaskier has sad sex, Jaskier’s mom is a piece of work, Jaskier’s school associates, Kaedwyn, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Rating May Change, Songwriting, Temporary Character Death, The Countess is a fabulous babe because i said so, Warnings May Change, all we know about her is that she is a beauty of this world, no betas we die like men, she's also a widow cuz fuck the count w a toasting fork, so i decided to make her awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:02:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22408387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: Jaskier is going to get Geralt back. He will. Even if he has to poke a finger in the eye of death itself to do it. Metaphorically, of course. He doesn't know where to even start looking for death's eyes, assuming it is a literal being with literal eyes. Although if it is, and it does, and he did, he would poke Death in the eye literally to get Geralt back as well.(An Orpheus and Eurydice AU)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 93
Kudos: 246





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I would blame this on voidofthestars but they asked for hades and persephone and I hared way off into orpheus and eurydice so, this is not their fault. It's mine. They're just the trigger and bless them for it, I'm having a fabulous fucking time. I'm writing this in installments over on [the tumblr](https://dancinbutterfly.tumblr.com/post/190470823170/im-craving-a-hades-persephone-witcher-au-yall-no) much quicker than I will be posting here so, ya know, feel free to follow it there too :D

Jaskier cries, uncontrollably, big ugly, sobs, into the rigor cold curve of Geralt’s neck for approximately three quarters of an hour before he pulls himself the fuck together. This cannot, nay, this will not stand. He will not stand for it. He stands up, wipes his face and stalks across the mess of gore and savagery to Yennefer as she tends to have all the answers or at least acts like she does.

“So,” he demands hoping his red rimmed eyes and snotty nose do not detract from the visage of grim determination he is attempting to put forth here, “tell me sorceress how exactly does one raise the dead these days?”

“You don’t.”

“But supposing I reject that as an utterly unacceptable answer, how might I go about it?”

“I hate to disappoint you with the truth but there’s nothing, Jaskier. When death comes for us, we leave this world and cross into oblivion.” Yennefer’s expression is pitying.

No. Intolerable. He will not be pitied. Not even if Geralt is lying on the blood soaked ground with his insides on the oudside not ten feet away. He is not pitiable, thank you very much, and especially not by some chaos mage who thinks she knows everything.

She doesn’t. No one knows everything. That’s ridiculous.

“That’s ridiculous,” Jaskier declares and Yennefer scoffs at him loudly. “It is. There’s no such thing as nothing. Everything is something. Doesn’t make sense does it, that we go for something to nothing.” He taps his temple. “Doesn’t add up.”

“You’re delirious with grief.”

“I’m putting the pieces together.”

“You’re not putting together shit, bard.”

“I’m unraveling the secrets of the spheres.”

“You’re unhinged.”

Geralt’s insides are on the outside, pulled out and left to line across his body like thick ropey banners of flesh, lumpy and bloody on his black leathers and Jaskier let’s out a hysterical laugh so he won’t lapse back into heartbroken sobs or worse, start screaming again the way he did when Geralt fell.

He gives Yennefer the grin of an unfavored court jester desperate to avoid execution and nods frantically. “You’re not wrong.”

* * *

The thing about battles, right, thing that Jaskier doesn’t include in his more moving ballads is that there’s often no one to tidy up afterwards, in particular not battles Geralt’s involved in, as he is the last one standing. Was. Geralt was the last one standing. Before. He’s fallen now, an ancient beautiful tree felled and splintered.

“That’s actually quite good. Remind me to use that.”

“Talking to yourself now?” Yennefer asks, dark brown quirking.

“No, of course not.”

“Surely that wasn’t directed at me. I’m trying to work so I know you’re not still bothering me.”

Her work mostly consists of ignoring him and Geralt, or the body that was Geralt, and making very swishy motions with her hands while whispering in Elder that is methodically checking the enemy for any survivors as another mage, a healer, moves the few wounded to shelter. And he can be rational. Jaskier knows the immediate concerns are much more important than piercing the veil and retrieving his, their, the witcher. Absolutely. He just doesn’t care.

“I was talking to...” Jaskier casts about because he cannot say Geralt, even if it’s true, even if he’s always talking to Geralt even when it’s been months since they last spoke, even now that the bastard is dead, because Yennefer doesn’t get that piece of him. Not even Geralt had that much and he had almost everything. His eyes set on the large forlorn form standing sentry over her master’s corpse and he is saved. “Roach. Obviously.”

Yennefer hums in a response that is far too Geralt-like for Jaskier’s comfort and folds his arms over his chest. Yennefer lifts both hands as if to say _Of course_ before resuming her spell work.

Jaskier doesn’t have a witty retort to that because there’s nothing to say. The battlefield is an ocean of charnel and gore and there’s no one coming to tend to the mess but the crows and other less appealing carrion creatures.

Geralt cannot stay here if Jaskier is going to get him back. No need to be a mage to realize that. It’s common sense. Whatever’s required, The White Wolf must be whole.

And Jaskier can do this. He can. He’s cleaned up selkirmore innards and basilisk gizzard and hag husks and all manner of monster filth. This should be easy. This is just the flesh and bone of a slightly-more-than-mortal man. He’s gutted beasts, seen men die and come across cadavers before.

Kneeling beside Geralt, taking his organs in his hands and tucking them back into the cavern of his body where they belong will be nothing, nothing at all.

“Nothing at all,” he repeats to Roach but when he licks his lips he tastes the lie there in the salt of new tears.

* * *

Jaskier does not scream nor does he vomit. He does cry, though, the whole way through, although he is quiet about it which, he thinks is sufficient given the task at hand, in his hands, halfway up his forarms. It’s not unreasonable, that one should cry a bit when one’s wrists are tangled in miles of the intestines of the man one, well. It’s a measured response to really rather overwhelming stimulus isn’t it? And he manages to get to job done.

So he doesn’t see what Yennefer’s so upset about, it’s not like she’s got blood painting her hands or drying stiffly in her sleeves or caked under her fingernails. All he needs is one little spell before she portals off to parts unknown.

“Jaskier.”

“What? It’s a tiny ask. I can’t have him getting juicy while I’m traveling.”

“Juicy?” Her dismay is all over her face. Really, how did she managed to spend decades in a court with an open book face face like that without getting murdered? The power of magecraft, he supposes.

“Ripe, if you prefer.”

“If he knew you described his body rotting in such flowery terms he would part your head from your shoulders.”

“Yes well then let’s be sure to keep him well-persevered so you can tattle on me later, shall we?”

She sucks her lower lip between her teeth and studies him with an expression that is less calculated than calculating, doing the sums of the situation and the risk he poses and the debts and between herself and the witcher, paid and outstanding. When it pops wetly free she’s come to a decision, and is, if he’s not mistaken, quite cross about it if the way she glares at him and mutters “Damn you Jaskier,” is any indication.

“You say the sweetest things. How is it that I’m not in love with you?”

Yennefer doesn’t reply but the gesture she makes is terribly rude and, Jaskier is sure, not one they teach at Aretuza. But energy and light surrounds Geralt so Jaskier keeps his observations to himself.

Right now, he has more important things to do. Specifically he needs to find an intact cart. Thankfully, he already has the horse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God fucking bless [shipsdeservedbetter](https://www.shipsdeservedbetter.tumblr.com) for making this  
>   
> They deserve all the awards.
> 
> Come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://www.dancinbutterfly.tumblr.com) where I am writing this quicker and in smaller pieces. 
> 
> Feedback and comments are cherished, thrived upon, and responded to(unless otherwise requested). Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Traveling with Geralt’s body shouldn’t be that dissimilar to traveling with Geralt. After all, Jaskier still carries the the conversation, naturally. Roach’s commentary is far more generous than anything Geralt has to contribute. But the space where grunts and hums and glares and stares and blinks and banter should go are gaping wounds that bleed an awful emptiness.

“It is remarkable how much noise you made, considering how taciturn you are, Geralt. Isnt it Roach?” She doesn’t even dignify that with a flick of her ear. Being harnessed has her in a foul mood and he cannot blame her. Lugging a pair of assholes in a shoddy wooden cart across the Continent must be a miserable undertaking. He’s certainly miserable.

“I’m miserable you know.”

That earns him a tail swish. Nothing from the frozen form in the back of the cart. Traveling with Geralt’s body shouldn’t be that dissimilar to traveling with Geralt. After all, Jaskier still carries the the conversation, naturally. Roach’s commentary is far more generous than anything Geralt has to contribute.

But the space where grunts and hums and glares and stares and blinks and banter should go are gaping wounds that bleed an uncanny silence.

“It is remarkable how much noise you made, considering how taciturn you are, Geralt. Isn’t it, Roach?”

She doesn’t even dignify that with a flick of her ear. Being harnessed has her in a foul mood and he cannot blame her. Lugging a pair of assholes in a shoddy wooden cart across the Continent must be a miserable undertaking. He can relate, he’s certainly miserable.

“I’m miserable you know.”

That earns him a tail swish. There’s more nothing from the frozen form in the back of the cart.

“You’ve made my life difficult, painful, awkward, embarrassing and infuriating but you’ve never made me miserable before Witcher, so good on you for that. Must be quite the coup for you considering how often you complained about me inflicting myself on you.”

No answer is forthcoming. Of course it’s not, because dead men cannot speak. “This seems like fundamental design flaw to the whole system if you ask me,” which no one did. “Yes I am aware of the fact I wasn’t consulted but it’s the principle of the thing. Downright irritating.”

More silence. Just the sound of the wheels bumping over the road and hooves clopping in the dust and the occasional bird chirping cheerfully. Jaskier seethes with vitriolic hatred towards all of it. It’s unhelpful, unproductive, and un-fucking -settling as if the balance of the world is off without Geralt in it.

“I don’t have plan,” Jaskier admits, just to fill the horrible yawning space the lack creates in the air. “Yennefer was terribly unhelpful and while everyone’s been moderately sympathetic to the notion of me taking a beloved kinsman to the family seat for burial that’s only going to work for so long. I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do when you’re not, you know, buried.”

There is no answer because there is no answer. All there is at the moment is the hypnotic sight of Roach taking one step after another, ever onward, always forward. It’s very poetic but also very unhelpful.

“Fuck it, just fuck it. I’ll figure it out when I get to Redania. After all, there’s no place like home, right?” He asks his audience of the dead and the quadruped. They don’t reply, naturally and Jaskier makes himself continue, as if this were normal, as if everything were fine. It’s not and he cannot make himself believe it is for one moment but he can pretend. He’s a consummate liar, especially to himself. “No place like home. That’s not bad actually. Maybe I should write that down.”

Roach is predictably unimpressed. She just huffs and continues on as if he never spoke at all.

* * *

The chalet belongs to the de Stael estate. It’s a lovely place, small by the standards of the gentry, with only a skeleton staff this time of year. Jaskier was prepared to lie his way in, floridly and with great finesse.

He is ill prepared for the Countess to greet him at the door instead of a servant with open arms and a sad smile.

“I was wondering when you’d arrive, darling.” She presses a kiss to his brow before stepping back to study him. She is very displeased with whatever she finds.

“But…how could you… what are you doing here?”

She clicks her tongue at him. “You know these grounds are mine and this house my home when I wish it. And word of the melancholy bard ferrying a beautiful corpse untouched by the natural order traveling from the south is making far better time than you.”

Wonderful. “This is why it’s so necessary to write your own copy. No one else ever gets it right.”

That brings the smile back to her face and Jaskier does love her. She has always been good, even when he’s not good for her.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” She asks, blinking at him with the fathomless eyes he’d written so many verses about. They’re beautiful. They’re the wrong color. The are entirely too human.

“Turning up like this?” Desolate and with a body in tow. “Everything?”

“Nonsense. We are always friends and you need one now that you’ve lost one so dear.”

Fuck. Fuck. His throat burns as he chokes out a strangled, “Yes.”

“Come in then.”

“Can I-“

“Yes. Of course. Bring your friend. I’m sure he’ll be comfortable in the solar.”

This is part of why Jaskier loved the Countess, among the myriad. She cared, even about the most ridiculous things and unfavorable people. The mere gesture gives more consideration to Geralt dead than most people ever gave him alive. The unfairness of that hit Jaskier in a wave of rage and loss and frustration that nearly knocks him off his feet.

Thankfully, Jaskier’s grown accustomed to his share of misery. So he doesn’t fall so much as deflate, weeks of travel and pain and stubbornness pouring out of him all at once and leaving him a slumped hollow shell, canting into the Countess’s radiant, well, countenance. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Indeed. Which is why you no longer have me.” She kisses his cheek once before turning to head inside. “Tea is in an hour so do hurry. You know I hate when a good meal grows cold.”

He does and her banter is familiar, almost normal. He could fall at her feet for it, but she wouldn’t appreciate it. Instead, he makes a concerted effort to be on time to meet her. He doesn’t succeed, not with Roach to stable and Geralt to place on a settee in the glow of the setting sun like a cursed princess in the worst kind of fairy tale. But he does try.

His lady is forgiving, this time, but she makes him eat the boar cold for his penance. Even so, Jaskier is grateful.

* * *

Conversing with the Countess is just as crushing as speaking with Yennefer but in a completely different way. Instead of telling him all the things he cannot do, he tells her his predicament and plan and she in turn asks pointed questions in an effort to help him assess.

“How are you going to going to go about your task?”

“I don’t know.

“What will you do next?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where are you going after you leave here?”

“I don’t know, damn it. I don’t know!”

“Do not raise your voice with me, Julian.”

Jaskier drops his head back against the edge of the settee where Geralt lies and stares up and the Countess’s elegant form draped across a chaises lounge two feet away suitably reproached. “I’m sorry. It would seem I am not only at my wit’s end but my rope’s as well.”

“Forgiven,” the Countess decrees with no small measure of largess. “And do you know that last about your wit and rope wasn’t terrible. A bit of work and you might have something.”

“Do you know you’re my very favorite?”

Her soft brown lips curve into a wry smile and her gaze flicks to the utterly motionless form he sits before. She doesn’t call him a liar. They both know he is one, and a terribly prolific one at that.

“Well you’re my favorite today.”

“Proclaiming your preferences to bored widows and bespelled corpses will not bring you further along on your journey darling.”

“Excuse me, you’re bored?” Jaskier is so insulted it actually shakes loose some of his melancholy.

“Typically. I will be less so once we devise a plan for your next steps with the late witcher.” Her gaze takes over Geralt from toe to to crown then back down. “You’re aware men in his profession are unpopular enough when they’re breathing. I can’t see one in his condition going over on the bardic circuit.”

That’s a bit harsh. Accurate but harsh. “Right. Well. Thank you for ruining a lovely moment with facts. That’s made things ever so much better. Fine. Plans. Next steps.”

“Indeed.” She leans in, neat fingertips tapping on her rather dramatic jawline. “What are they?”

“I don’t know,” Jaskier bemoans, or rather tries to bemoan. His bemoaning is quite whiny.

“Well what would your witcher do?”

“I don’t know.”

The Countess sighs and sprawls back into the embrace of the chair. The way blue upholstery compliments her cool brown skin as she sits aglow in the sunlight filtering in from the massive windows that fill every wall of the solar is it’s own sort of poetry. Color has never been his forte sadly. So he may only take in her beauty and marvel.

“Julian?”

“Huh?”

“You’re staring.”

“Can you blame me?”

She laughs and when she shakes her head, her braids swing around her face. Dazzling.

“Focus, darling.”

“What’s the point? I don’t know what to do or where to go or how to proceed. I’m a crazy person with a very pretty corpse accessory. It’s a niche. I just need to accept it, work it into my act somehow, a penny for a tale, two to see my dead friend frozen in time. We’ll be even more famous.”

“Or?”

“Or I don’t know. Didn’t I establish that?”

“Well what would he do?”

“I-”

“Yes. You don’t know. Did he mention anywhere in particular. Rivia?”

“No. Other people talked about Rivia. He’s of Rivia but he never seemed to have any emotional connection to the place. More than twenty bloody years running around after him and he never told me about his hometown. Can you believe?”

Her teeth flash brightly in her dark face. “From what you’ve told me about him, yes, I can.”

“Enfuriating man. Always plays everything so close to the vest. Not that he wears vests or anything but that.” He waves his hand back at the black shirt and trousers that Geralt wore still, torn and bloody though they might be. “Although, you know, there was one time, in Cintra, I got him to wear green. It looked rather good on him, I must say.”

“You always had a knack for fashion.”

“I have several knacks.“

"But not for listening.”

“I beg your pardon?”

"What did he talk about?”

“Monsters. Killing monsters. Ale. His horse. How terrible people are. Witchering if I was either absolutely terrible or quite good. It depended on the day. It’s been a long time, my lady.”

She hums in understanding. Their own relationship had been established even before he met Geralt in Posada. They were barely more than children, he a teenager and her a newly (and ecstatically) widowed young royal of twenty-one. They’ve had more than half a lifetime to learn and just as long to forget and lose things that once seemed so damnably important.

Some things are still vital. Without the Countess de Stael, Jaskier doesn’t know if there would be music, poetry, adventures with Geralt, legends circulating the continent rewriting the reputation of the Butcher of Blavikin into the heroic White Wolf. He fell in love with art when he fell in love with her and that love has outlasted the passion that burned out in her bed several times over. The friendship remained and so did the creation. He will love her forever for the gifts she gave him, for the education she directed him to, for wonder she inspired, for the support but there is only a soft hum in his heart where once their was a desperate shriek. It’s comfortable, familial and safe. He likes it.

His soul is, possibly to his misfortune, screaming for Geralt. It has been for more than twenty years. Fuck.

“Tell me about the witchering, Julian. That never seems to make it into your ballads.”

So he does. He tells her about necklaces that tremble in the face of evil, of silver and steal slicing through hungry flesh, about cat eyes that expand in the dark, about noses that twitch and bodies that can do things that they simply shouldn’t be able to and at the root of it all boys, orphaned or abandoned, swept away to the mysterious witcher schools across the continent that were destroyed long before either of them were born.

“I suppose he can’t call himself Geralt of Kaer Mohren can he? Wouldn’t go over very well in those taverns and bawdhouses, reminding them what he is. After all, reminding people of a genocide might inspire another, might it not?”

“Don’t talk like that, you sound like Geralt only all prim and articulate and wordy.” Then it hits him that he is an absolute fucking idiot. Of course. Of course that’s the answer. Gods. He is so dumb. He is really dumb. Truly. “Oh.”

“Hm?”

“Did you know?” Jaskier demands.

Both of the Countess’s dark eyebrows crawl towards her brow. “Did I know what, darling?”

“That I need to go to Kaer Morhen?”

“Now why would I know that?”

“Because you know are a genius and know absolutely everything.”

“Of course I’m not. I’m just observant.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means I had no ideas either, initially. But once you arrived dragging a dead witcher behind you like a small child with a favored toy, I may have done some research. From there it was obvious that would be a reasonable next step.” She shrugs. “You had to put it together yourself. You like to put things together yourself otherwise you're not satisfied.”

Jaskier glares at her. “I hate you.”

“You don’t.”

“I do.”

“You do not.”

“No," he relents. "But I am quite cross.”

“Reasonable. So, when do you leave?”

“I don't know.” She heaves a heavy sigh and looks like she would hit him if getting up weren’t such a heavy burden. He holds up both hands. “I don’t! I don't know where Kaer Morhen is, or how long it would take to get there. Leaving without doing some research of my own is foolish and possibly deadly.”

“So you don’t know yet.“

"No. I don’t know yet.”

“Well. That’s easily fixed.” She rings a bell he hadn’t even noticed she had at the ready. “Let’s get started.”


	3. Chapter 3

Jaskier arrives in Oxenfurt late and barely makes it past the city guard. All that what’s your business who goes there nonsense is rather prohibitive. As is his cargo. Thank god for his connections on campus. He only has to drop a few very very influential names (only three of whom he’s enjoyed congress with thank you) before the guard let him pass to repeat the whole show with the university guest housing. That goes much quicker but his face is recognized on sight there and no one questions why a visiting professor would want a stable for his horse and a bed for the night. The body gets inquiries, naturally, but unlike in the taverns in the road from the de Stael estate they are all genuine curiosity from students of the arts, looking for a story from outside the ivory towers.

He tells them what he believes, what he’s learned, that if leave home you may find things you never expected and you could also die horrifically. The students laugh nervously at this but Jaskier does not.

Geralt died in his arms, unafraid but in such pain. All Jaskier had been able to do was ensure that he wasn’t alone when it happened and not a single thing more. There’s nothing epic or poetic about death. Jaskier knows that now and isn’t afraid to say so.

He has many friends and old lovers in Oxenfurt but most give him a wide berth. The word around campus (and town where is is still well known from the escapades of his school days) is he’s gone mad. That’s fair, he supposes. There’s not much magic on the streets of cities like Oxenfurt and he can imagine how he must come off to those who have never encountered monsters or seen mages perform acts of sorcery that pull acts of creation from Chaos. To the average citizen he’s just a lunatic talking to dead men and horses, defending witchers; he doesn’t blame them for thinking as the do.

The few who aren’t afraid to pass time with him are the more eccentric and seasoned who have more care for the craft than propriety. They help him find provisions by day and by night they write with him, experimental works that are cruel and ugly works that rail against mortality and spit curses in the face of death to sharp beats.

They treat him as not unlike he treated Geralt in the infancy of their acquaintance, as a source of inspiration worth nurturing for the sustenance he could provide their muse. He’s in enough of supplies and company not to mind, even if it does make him sting with guilt at evernysing him so poorly even as he aches with longing for Geralt’s company.

And each of them is in fact talented in their own way and he relishes collaborating with other artists when the opportunity arises, however unfortunate the surrounding circumstances. He appreciates their input every day he has it right up to the last, and in turn they indulge his ridiculous angry compositions.

“You can’t say ‘Death fucked a goat,’” Deita, a first year flautist and composition student he’d befriended on first arrival declares as they hunch over papers in a warm smoky tavern on his last night in town.

“Why not?”

“Doesn’t rhyme.”

“If I make it ‘fucks’ could it work do you suppose?”

“Best find a richer metaphor, son,” suggests his old teacher, a grey-bearded dwarf called Morton. “Cavorting with yearlings perhaps?”

“Not bad but it lacks bite. I really like the idea of the specter of death fucking a goat.”

“When your lady fair drowns in a moat?” Deita offers.

Jaskier brushes his chin with the tip of the quill before writing that down. It’s not bad.

Morton clicks his tongue his tongue. “A bit juvenile verse, lass.”

She frowns. “I’m eighteen.”

Jaskier blinks at her owlishly. “Melitele’s tits, are you really?” She’s lovely, plump and mature and doesn’t look eighteen. At all. Thank the gods he‘s been too distracted and distraught to try to fuck her.

She blinks at him in confusion. “Yes.”

“Fuck…I’m so old.”

“Aye,“ Morton agrees. He gives Jaskier a consolatory pat on the arm with his small beefy hand as if he weren’t over one-hundred himself on the day Jaskier walked into his introductory poetry seminar more than two decades earlier. “Sneaks up on you it does.”

“I like the goat bit.” Deita says, undeterred and unphased. “You should keep it.”

“I shouldn’t be talking about fucking with you at all,” Jaskier mutters.

“Why not? I have a six month old at home.”

Jaskier has no reply to that so he gets up to order another round of drinks for the table. He’s far too sober for any of this and tomorrow will be a difficult day.

Then again, all his days are difficult now. Still, any excuse for a measure of peace is a welcome one. He cannot be picky any longer.

* * *

“Is that a body? Why is it in my home!”

“And hello to you too, mother darling. I’m fine, thank you for asking.”

He is not fine, hasn’t been fine in countless hours and miles since Geralt’s hand dropped from where it touched his face, limp and empty. He may have to lie to his mother but he doesn’t have to police his tone with the same scrutiny as he’s been forced to exercise in public. He knows she doesn’t care.

Jaskier doesn’t care anymore either. Mutual apathy makes it so much easier to do what he likes when he likes how he likes without concern for her input. Tonight that means getting Roach new shoes, getting Geralt somewhere safe that he can check him over and perhaps get him better clothes for the journey to Kaer Morhen and getting some sleep for himself in a real bed.

That’s all right. It doesn’t bother him over much any longer, not like it did when he was a boy, when he’d just wanted her attention and affection and all she’d wanted was the performance of a young courtier who met the strict standards of Redanian society. He had wanted to learn and make music and have adventures and be Jaskier and in the end he found he couldn’t have both. He’s chosen and isn’t sorry.

Thankfully, the servants are being very helpful on all fronts and his mother inflates like a tanned bladder full of bad wine. Jaskier ignores her. So many things are easier when he ignores her.

“You are not bringing that _thing_ into my home, Julian, I forbid it.”

“There are two problems with that declaration, mother darling. One,” he holds up a finger “Geralt is not a thing. Don’t ever speak of him that way again or you will regret it because two,” a second finger joins the first, “This is my house and you live here on my good grace and charity. I could put you in a cozy little dowager property so far from Tretogor you’ll never see court again,” he brings his thumb up to his fingers and snaps loudly. “Like that.”

“It’s like I don’t even know you,” his mother sniffs.

“Oh, goodness, how new and different. Tell me another one, mother, as I’m always seeking thrilling new perspectives.”

“You-you need a new hobby,” she gasps, hands on her hips, and looking at her, Jaskier is back on a river bank in Rinde a decade earlier, looking at himself from the outside and finds himself obnoxious and entitled and just like her. Gods, no wonder Geralt has wished him ill. He wishes himself patience and understanding retroactively if not the tumor.

“If I told you this is who I am you wouldn’t listen, would you?”

“You are a viscount, Julian, and my only son." She barks, hands flying as she shouted. "You have left an estate in neglect and sailed passed thirty-five with no wife and no heir. It’s a disgrace to the Pankratz line.”

“I could have an heir.”

“With who?”

“I don’t know. Someone.” He shrugs. He pulls out and most of his partners took precautions but one could never be sure. “I haven’t kept that close a track.”

“Freya, preserve my family.” She wails and Jaskier thinks it’s a pity she never tried singing with any real effort. She has the range. And she certainly has the drama. “Whatever musical nonsense you thought you had to do, it’s done. He’s dead. There’s no more coins to toss. Just stay here and grow up, Julian.”

Jaskier feels oddly warm. He can’t help it. “You heard my song?”

His mother's lips narrow into a thin flat line and somehow she speaks without moving them. “Julian.”

“You did. You heard it.”

“Everyone’s heard it.”

He points at her, unyielding. “But _you_ heard it.”

She heaves a sighs heavy with defeat and nods. “Of course I did.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Did you like it?” He hates how much he cares. He shouldn't. She's never cared but she is his mother and so, of course, he does. Damnit. He wants her to like it. He wants her to like all his songs but few if any more than Toss A Coin To Your Witcher. That song lies at the bedrock of his soul and in many ways, it is fragile as spin sugar in rain.

She shrugs, dismissive. “The other one’s better.”

“The other one?” He tries hard not to come off pathetic as an eager puppy but in two decades of performing bardic heraldry this is the first time she’s acknowledged any of his work, let alone praised it. And inside he is still a child, sitting in her lap and missing her embrace.

“Yes. The other one.”

“Which?”

"You know." She waves a hand dismissively but sings, in a clear soprano he has never heard before in his life, “'I’m weak, my love, and I am wanting.'” She looks him over critically then frowns so deep it cuts valleys in her forehead and between her eyes. “It was... forlorn. Made me worry about you.”

She worried? “Mother.”

She sniffs as if scenting something foul in the air and not suffering from an acute case of genuine emotion and straightens her fine skirts. “So, is it about him too? The bo- witcher?”

Jaskier sighs. They don’t talk like this. They’ve never talked. Not in his whole life.

Ah well. An adventure is what he always wanted and what’s an adventure without risk? “All my songs are about him. In one form or fashion.”

She hums in answer and it reminds him of Geralt. Everything reminds him of Geralt. He misses him so much it makes him furious and breaks his godsdamn heart.

“Mother?”

She blinks and where he is so used to seeing ice or anger there is instead liquid sadness and surrender. “You’re never coming home, are you?”

“No.”

He watches as she steals herself and exhales her grief. He wants to learn that trick. His own still coats his lungs.

“Then you’d best get better at writing me. Your father didn’t invest in tutors for you to fail to keep me abreast of your travels.” She pauses and touches his head pushing his fringe back like she once did when he was very small. “And try to visit more.“

“Can I?”

“Of course. I miss you when you’re not here, Julian. Surely you know that.”

Well, no, he didn’t. She never said and they fought like monsters wrapped in silver chains whenever they were together so, no. Never once. “I was under the distinct impression that you don’t like me very much.”

“That’s because I don’t, dear, you’re a ridiculous man-child with terrible taste who has destroyed our reputation. Unfortunately you’re my son and I love you quite fiercely and that’s my burden to bear.”

“Oh. Well. I’m sorry mother. If I can I’ll be back next summer.”

“With happier songs.”

Jaskier doesn’t promise that. The world has already come loose enough as it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am living for yalls feedback. It's keeping my writing. Thank you so much.


	4. Chapter 4

Kaedwyn is a cold tired country full of cold tired people. They’re hungry and worn because winter comes early and spring comes late and they have a short-tempered king who cannot let sleeping dogs lie with Aedrin and they no longer grow witchers in their Blue Mountains to keep them safe from all the things that go bump in the night. Between all that, death is a not so much a friend to the citizens as constant shadow.

Which may be why Jaskier doing so damn well here. Here’s got a jig that works the whole death fucked a goat thing neatly in to the rhyme about a dead love in a moat that’s gaining popularity with every mile in country. Humor is comforting, he supposes, or perhaps it’s the defiance. Whatever the reason a week into traveling through Kaedwyn and he’s got requests for it. It’s enough to make him feel like a proper bard again, as opposed to the grimmest courier the world has ever known.

Best of all? People dance. They laugh. They kiss their sweetheart and sneak out of the tavern before his set is through to songs about death and dying. He did that. It doesn’t help Geralt, lying still and cold under a blanket in his sad little cart as Roach sleeps stabled nearby. But it’s a kind of power one he used to love, when he was a different man.

He pretends to be grounded and whole and plays like he means it until last call. Then he collapses to the bar, weary and wrung out.

A pint appears before him as if conjured by Yennefer of Vengeberg, tall and full of dark brown Kaedwenian stout. He frowns at the amber foam as it slowly settled and tilts his head at the glass. “I didn’t order this.”

“I thought you could use it,” says a raspy female voice beside him. “After such a performance, one must need a drink.”

And alright she’s not wrong and she’s not bad looking either. Big brown eyes, soft brown hair, full lips and a full bosom spilling over her corset and filling up her chemise and all of it is pointed in his direction.

“That was kind of you.”

“It was, wasn’t it,” she muses and he feels more than sees her gaze as it follows his bobbing Adams’s apple. Her appraisal is absolutely ravenous but he still isn’t expecting it when she asks “Care for a fuck?”

Thank heavens she waited for him to set his pint down. “I beg your pardon?”

“Would you,” she points a delicate if work calloused finger at him stroking along his the hem of his doublet, “Care for a fuck with me,” her pretty finger comes back home to trace the swell of him incredible breast, over the crest then down into the valley, “right now.”

“Uh.”

“Is that a yes, bard?”

It’s not really, but it’s also not a no so fuck it. Really, fuck it. Why not? He hasn’t been touched since- well. The Countess had not offered and he had not asked, had he? He had not.

And Geralt is dead, so.

“Why not?”

* * *

He cannot say for certain it's the saddest sex he's ever had. He doesn't keep track of those sorts of things. But he's certainly a melancholy bastard throughout even if he does do his best to show the lady a good time and she does seem to enjoy herself. But it feels wrong. Off. Lonely.

It's so fucking lonely, even with her beautiful body atop his and her soft hands all over him. Shit, he is so lonely and he has been for months now which is ridiculous because he went endless months and countless fucks without Geralt before.

But then, Geralt was alive before.

He was out there, in the world, breathing. Now he's dead in a cart in the town livery. And so perhaps Jaskier weeps when he comes but he's hardly the first person to cry during sex and he will not be the last.

She lies on her stomach after and studies him, her big brown eyes contemplative. She traces scars on his chest, his arms, and says “You don’t sing about these.”

“Nothing worth singing about.”

"Yet you write songs about death that lovers dance to."

"I am complex and multifaceted."

"You are wounded."

There’s no arguing with that. He’s been bleeding out slowly but surely since Geralt’s intestines spilled out all over the battlefield. So, of course, he’s going to argue anyway. “I’m an artist, my good woman. My people are sensitive.” 

“Your people typically carry the dead in their hearts and their craft. You, though, carry him behind your horse wrapped in linen. Tell me, does no one ask why?”

He goes still against her but she remains relaxed and loose at his side. Her curiosity seems genuine and Jaskier doesn’t trust her. 

“Most aren’t that bold.”

“Most are afraid to live because they are afraid to die.”

“With good reason.”

“Coram Agh Ter adjusts his web as needed. You of all people can see that.”

Oh. Shit. 

“Who does what now?” Please let him have heard her wrong. Please don’t let him have fucked a member of a murderous death cult. 

“The lion spider who spins our lives,” she says, without a hint of irony dashing all his hopes and confirming that the first person his dick was inside since Geralt was in fact a member of not only a murderous death cult but the most famous murderous death cult on the whole of the Continent. Just bloody wonderful. 

Oh. And she is still pontificating of her great big killer spider god theology. Fantastic.

“He cuts threads of his web when the balance needs tending and sometimes, others cut those threads for him but it’s all part of the process of fate’s weaving. We assist when we can. It is our duty and our privilege to right the wrongs that occur when people try to take the threads into their own hands.”

“Oh, is it?” He needs to get out of this bed, out of this cottage, and out of this fucking town.

“Yes, of course. Your songs, they embrace Coram Agh Ter, they find humor and light in his work. So few people understand. We need you.”

Jaskier chokes on a hysterical laugh because he has been at this long enough to know you do not antagonize the fanatical. They're far more dangerous than the insane could ever be. You humor them and then get the hell out. Gods, why couldn't she have just been married with a large angry husband?

“Oh, do you? For what?”

“The same thing your witcher needed you for, to rehabilitate our image.” She taps his nose playfully. “The Temerians hunted us to the edge of extinction, burned us at the stake, all for attempting to keep the balance." She doesn't mention that they were doing it through murder and mass suicides but what are details like that when making a sales pitch? "We live underground now all because people are so grim about death. You put a positive spin on things and show people that we’re no different from the Sisters of Melitele.”

The Cult of Coram Agh Ter is absolutely different from the Sisters of Melitele. The Sisters do not go around assassinating people for one thing or inciting suicides for another. But it’s fine. This is fine. He can smile and agree and do whatever he has to in order to get out of this lovely cultist’s bed without ending up a skull adornment on an underground alter or something equally horrifying. 

“How about I consider it?”

“Fair enough.” She agrees. “Keep this between us?”

“Of course.” He's planning on it. He is planning on taking his coin and getting out of this shitty hamlet that is apparently a seat of Coram Agh Ter worshipers immediately. “But right now I have to see a man about a horse.”

Poor Roach. One day he’s going to pay her back for all the excuses she’s provided. Later, once he’s sure he’s not going to be the victim of a friendly kill for the sake of spring cleaning on Coram Agh Ter’s web. 

Although he thinks he can find a good song in all this, he muses as he laces his doublet closed in the cold night air. Something about sweet poison or maybe the kiss of the spider woman. 

“Yeah, that one’s quite good.” He’ll have to ask Roach what she thinks. Later. Once they’re well on their way out of this town. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the everything i know about the cult of Coram Agh Ter comes from the wiki and some play videos? I took liberties cuz I needed them. 
> 
> Thank you for your feedback. They're keeping me writing for the realest real. :D


	5. Chapter 5

Jaskier is expecting Kaer Morhen to be an empty ruin when he arrives. And it is indeed a ruin, tragic in the way only a place that has stood demolished for nearly a century can. But it is not empty. 

Roach can sense these things and Jaskier trusts her sense of anxiety like he used to trust Geralt’s battle-ready stance. There is someone, something, here. He is not alone. And isn’t that just fantastic news.

“Right. You attack, I’ll defend the high ground,” He whispers. Roach exhales in disagreement at his frankly brilliant tactical assessment of the scenario. What does she know? She’s a bloody horse.

“Who goes there?” A high reedy voice demands.

Jaskier bows deeply, so deep and formal his fringe nearly brushes the stone of the path. “Masters of Kaer Morhen, I am Julian Alfred Pankhurst, Viscount de Letterhoven of Redania, associate professor of Oxenfurt University, bard renowned to the farthest reaches of the Continent and friend of your student, Geralt of Rivia.”

“You know Geralt? Do you know where he is?” The voice is tremulous, hopeful and, now that Jaskier has heard it speak a bit more, young. 

Well, shit.

“I do indeed. We have traveled together many a time over these past years, shared many a tale.” And then because he cannot lie about the dead when they are so close they might as well be giving him the stink eye he amends. “I shared tales. He glared at me over the fire, grunted, and occasionally me to shut up but if you know him, you know, that’s practically the same thing.”

“Um,” the high voice is wavering and fragile now, “Lord Pankratz, do you perchance know when he’s due to return?”

Well _shit_. Buggering blistering bleeding shit. The girl, and it is definitely a girl, has a pronounced Cintran accent and her formal speech speaks of years of training. He knows who she is because there’s really one one person she can possibly be.

Fucking Geralt. 

He takes a deep breath and fixes a neutral expression on his face. He can give a command performance for a royalty. It is in fact one of his specialities.

“Princess Cirilla, I think it would be best if we discuss this face to face, rather than shouting to each other across the ramparts, don’t you agree?”

There’s a distant clatter of footsteps on parapet steps followed by the groaning grind of the old portcullis lifting before a blonde slip of a girl is exploding out of the ruin like lightning from a storm cloud. When she sees Geralt’s body, she falls to her knees and lets loose a scream of grief that sends the loose stones on the castle crashing to the ground, splits the bark on the trees and draws blood from his ears and poor Roach’s as well. 

But Jaskier doesn’t try to stop her. It may have been fifteen years but he still remembers her mother, on her knees, screaming out her own pain with a force of chaos that had nearly destroyed a hall full of the most powerful people on the Continent. There was no Witcher to bring this princess back to herself. 

So all Jaskier can do is brace himself and Roach as best he can against the onslaught of her power and try his very best not to be too jealous. Life and death are not fair and neither is the fact that this little girl who has not even been alive as long as he’s known Geralt has a voice that can convey so perfectly the hurt he carries in a way he will never be capable of. But he is used to longing for the ability to possess things that exist in the world yet are beyond him. 

He has loved Geralt for more than half his life, after all.


End file.
